Fun Excerpts from the Michael Bay Ninja Turtles script

In case you missed it, or in case you’ve got better things to do than sit around stressing about what a possible Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie would be like (well la di da, Mr. Productive Guy), the script for the Michael Bay-produced reboot leaked online over the weekend. Production on that shut down back in June while the release was postponed to 2014, and still no word on whether the production team of Bay and director Jonathan Liebesman (of the execrable Battle Los Angeles) will still be working from the script by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec. But I have to assume that the script, posted by TMNT fan site (ugh, how old are you?) TMNTnotTANT was real, as it got them a cease-and-desist letter from Paramount. So how bad does a script have to be for the studio that purposely hired the directors of Transformers and Battle Los Angeles for them to shut it down? For one thing, Shredder is now an Army Colonel named “Schrader,” and April O’Neal and Casey Jones are star-crossed lovers. I didn’t get a chance to finish the script before it got pulled, but Comic Book Movie summarizes:

18 year old Casey Jones is going nowhere in life. His friends have moved on. His girlfriend April O’ Neal has a prosperous career in NYC. He also works a security guard at a furniture factory. But all of that changes when one night, he stumbles upon a secret underground government hideout and finds four humanoid turtles. From there, he and the reptilian “mutants” uncover a plot to destroy Earth and are set on a course to discovering the Turtles’ secret past.

This script has a bad case of Spider-Man 3 syndrome. Too many villains and none of them given proper time to develop. There are 4 villains in this movie: Shredder (Here, a colonel named Schrader. God, shot me.), Krang (Who only has 2 lines of dialouge and doesn’t come in until the 3rd act.), Bebop, and Rocksteady. The latter two are the only ones who resemble and act like the versions fans know and love. Shredder is given the worst treatment of them all. He’s been so altered that the writers might as well just cut him and replace him with a new character. Splinter is okay, but he’s pretty weak. In every action scene where he’s present, he is always getting his ass kicked. [ComicBookMovie]

But honestly, who cares? If you’re a grown adult who was looking forward to a Ninja Turtles movie I don’t like you already, so don’t tell me how Michael Bay raped your childhood, okay? It’s clear your childhood already kind of sucked, save your adulthood before it’s too late. Still, the script is interesting in a wow-someone-was-actually-making-this kind of way. I got through about 30 pages, and a couple things struck me about it, examples of which I’ve provided on the following pages.

1. Swearing in the set directions. This is not a feature unique to this script, but I always find it strange and intriguing when people writing a PG movie with no swearing curse like sailors in their directions to the director and actors. Sam looked at the f*cking phone. He looked at that f*cking phone like it was the last c*cksucking phone on the tw*tsh*tting Earth.What the f*ck kind of dumb sh*thead could be calling Sam’s black ass at this hour? Adds to the hard-boiled vibe, I guess? I dunno, man.

2. Pop psychology in the set directions. Telling you what the characters are thinking in cheesy ways, etc. That’s cheating, bro.

3. General awkwardness of prose. I didn’t get a chance to screencap every instance of this, but the archaic wording of the whole thing reminded me of that Nic Cage voiceover in Raising Arizona – “The doctor said her womb was a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase.” Except, you know, adapted to a kids movie about alien turtles.

Wow, that must be quite a look. Going to be hard for the director to do that one justice. Also, “old young lovers?” Is there a Benjamin Button angle in this I don’t know about? I like to imagine two babies having graphic sex, but looking like seasoned professionals.

The Reservoir Dogs WERE cool. I can’t wait for MichaelAngelo’s rant about how Mr. Pink is like Mr. F*ggot and Donatello’s theory about how “Like a Virgin” is about a guy with a big dick.

“Yolked.” Not muscular, but yolked. Not yoked, like oxen, but yolked, like an egg. And all so he can carry around a “big chip,” which I always understood as a part of your shoulder that had been chipped, like paint, or a fingernail. As in, something missing that leaves you wounded. But who knows, maybe it’s like this giant chocolate chip made of childhood slights that just sits there pissing you off? Plausible, I suppose.

“I know this won’t be in the movie, I just want the producers to see how good I am with wordplay.”

“EYEF*CKS!” Eyef*ck is a set direction! AND it’s in all caps so you know it’s official. I wonder if the Care Bears movie script was like this. “WISH BEAR shot CHEER BEAR a glance, as if to say ‘I know your game, you c*nt. You’ve been using that greasy p*ssy of yours like a weapon since we were cubs.'”

Again, that’s a lot of damn psychology to fit into a couple two-second glances. But this part is important, it establishes a strong foundation for the buff anthropomorphic turtles who will eventually show up to karate kick terrorists.

WHAT THE F*CK WAS THAT??! Good thing he only thinks in swear words, that way it doesn’t affect the rating.

Okay, I know “bullsh*tting” is fairly standard, but still, I can’t help but imagine this whole thing is being written by Bruce Willis’s character in The Last Boy Scout. Hmm, how would a grizzled detective write these set directions…

So who’s going to play this “rugged 18-year-old?” Is Zac Efron too old? BooBoo Stewart, maybe? Nick Nolte is solid on the ruggedness, not so much on the “vestiges of boyish charm.” Dang, this one’s gonna be hard. You can see why they had to postpone it.

I know its fun to mock this abortion but did you guys read beyond the first 4 pages? All these lines are right there. Granted I couldn’t make it past page 5 but cmon give us some surprises from the 3rd act. BeBop & Gen. Shredder capture April O’Neil and confuse her with the porn star and try and double team her.

I spent a good chunk of Sunday reading it much the same way I imagine Vince watches that Art Gallery Girls show. My major take away was that the writers do not know what the term “eye-fuck” means, AT ALL.

Traditionally, and I’m just musing here, to “eye fuck” is to “fuck” with one’s “eyes.” It seems a little odd that, mid-fight, Cataldo would indulge in a mental consummation of his homosexual attraction to Casey but hey, no one likes a nit-picker.

The most realistic part of the story: an 18-year-old doesn’t have his life together.

HOW IS THIS A DYNAMIC PLOT POINT!!?!?!?!?! For fuck’s sake, did anyone do anything but try to fuck bitches and drink beer when you were 18? It’s THE time to be a complete fuckstick. No one expects you to do anything spectacular, unless you’re in the military or a fucking Division I athlete. Even still, at least 98 percent of the 18-year-old population is a waste of fucking oxygen.

It’s just like the god-damned Raimi Spider-Man trilogy. Peter Parker is the only one of his little friends group living the existence of an actual high school/college student by the middle of Spider-Man 2. Mary Jane is off being a half-assed actress in plays and Harry Osborne is just riding the coattails of his father’s legacy and blowing his trust fund while being the only 20-year-old trying to be a pioneer the field of energy while all the actual geniuses his age are toiling away at MIT or some other school for super-smart kids.

So when you tell me that Casey Jones is an 18-year-old whose life is going nowhere and expect me to be flabbergasted by the notion, you make me want to beat the shit out of you with a big book of reality.

In summation: Damn you Michael Bay and all who follow you. May you be raped by robots of your own creation in hell.

Isn’t this just one of the Transformers scripts with the character names Mad-Libbed in?

21 year old SAM WITWICKY is going nowhere in life. His friends have moved on. His girlfriend NEEDS NO NAME has a prosperous career in NYC. He also IS UNEMPLOYED. But all of that changes when one night, he stumbles upon AN AUTOBOT NAMED “BUMBLEBEE” and finds TRANSFORMING ALIEN ROBOTS. From there, he and the ROBOTS uncover a plot to destroy Earth and are set on a course to discovering the ROBOTS’ secret past.

Holy Christ on a cracker, you’re right. Also, I don’t quite understand why Casey is the star, and why he is the one who finds the turtles, and he’s the one who gives them their colors, when April finds them and Splinter gives them the colors. Just goes to show you how insanely rigid these guys are to their prepubescent, Hero’s Journey formula.

@ Kevin – because the Transformers’ model made billions world-wide and the primary demo for this, we’ll call it a movie, is fifteen to twenty-five-year-olds. Pretty simple if you ignore fact that the original series played just fine to young males when an adult woman and a giant rat were the protagonists.

Thank you Vince, this made my Tuesday. I know what I lack in professional acclaim I more than make up for in bitterness, but I love how the rules you’re taught about the craft of screenwriting don’t actually apply to the people being paid to write screenplays. Like, say for example, writing exposition into your action lines instead of writing characters, actions and dialogue that exemplify said exposition. Not that I want to be the guy complaining about E.E. Cummings’ punctuation – just sayin’s all.

why is bebop and rocksteady krang and Dimension X in this movie and combined with avatar and transformers plot just make the damn mirage comic versions and their adventuers into a movie instead of gleep gloop shity movie is he trying to take joel schumacher place hell i rather watch batman forever and batman and robin in 3d than this pile of shit.

and why do the turtles have parents and other species of there kind they are the only ones that are mutants and there foster father is a rat and how they a race of rats and turtles in that shit living together oh and whats next slash tokka and venus de milo in this retarted movie as well that fucking up there mythology and what they are and there name no wonder peter laird hated this script

Vince, it’s a chip ON your shoulder, not in it or out of it. The phrase comes from the old practice of balancing a wood chip on your shoulder and daring someone to knock it off. (Look up “chip on shoulder” on Wikipedia for the full background.) So the script had that one right. “Yolked”, on the other hand…

lol you must hate how your life turned out. having to write about this kind of stuff. bet you had dreams of winning a Pulitzer or something but realized you failed at life so you lashed out at people with passion. hahah might as well quit at life dude.